"I would prefer not to," he said respectfully and slowly, and then he vanished gently. Academics celebrate it as the beginning of modernism, yet for readers around the world – even for those intimidated by Moby-Dick – Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most captivating and moving novellas of all time. The story is set in mid-19th century Wall Street in New York City and may have been Herman Melville's most prescient tale: What if a young man, trapped in the race of commerce, simply decided to say, "I would prefer not to"? This narrative is one of the last fictional works that Melville published before he, in despair over the continued critical rejection of his work following Moby-Dick, gave up publishing fiction altogether. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's Magazine – unfortunately met with critical disapproval. The series "The Art of the Novella" is too short to be a novel and too long to be a short story.